The Wheel That Watched Me

Sometimes, a picture holds more than what’s in the frame — it captures a feeling you didn’t even know you had.

There was something about that night  something quietly strange.

A thousand sounds filled the fairgrounds: music bursting from speakers, children laughing, vendors calling out, plastic toys squeaking, and the hum of the crowd moving like a wave. Everything around me was loud, chaotic, alive.

And yet… I felt quiet.

I walked alone, letting my feet take me wherever they wanted. That’s when I looked up.

The giant ferris wheel stood still above me  not moving, not turning, just there. Towering. Lit up in patterns that looked like broken stars. It wasn’t the tallest thing I had ever seen. It wasn’t even spinning. But something about it pulled me in.

It didn’t feel like I was looking at it.
It felt like it was looking at me.

For a few seconds, the fair disappeared. The music faded into a low echo. The lights around me blurred into background noise. And all that remained… was the wheel.

I took out my phone and clicked a picture  almost on instinct, without planning anything. I didn’t frame it perfectly. I didn’t wait for the “right” moment. But when I looked at the shot later, I saw something I hadn’t expected.

I didn’t just click a Ferris wheel.
I had captured a scene from a story I didn’t know I was writing.

The sky looked bruised  a mix of blue, black, and something in between. The lights sliced across the frame like signals from another world. The wheel, silent and unmoving, didn’t feel like a ride anymore. It felt like a character. A witness. A silent giant that had seen too many evenings like this. Maybe it had stories to tell. Maybe  that night, it chose to tell one to me.

Editing the photo didn’t feel like color grading  it felt like listening. I didn’t change the image much. I just brought out what it already held. The shadows spoke. The colors whispered. And the silence? It stayed with me.

That photo became more than a favorite. It became a moment I return to.

Because in that photo, I found something that I always chase now a feeling, a story, a sense that the world has hidden tales waiting to be noticed. Sometimes, all you have to do is stop, look up… and let something bigger than you speak.

The wheel never moved that night. But something inside me did.